International Journal of Modern Engineering Research (IJMER)

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Vol.2, Issue.3, May-June 2012 pp-796-798
ISSN: 2249-6645

Bit Error Rate (BER) Analysis of Rayleigh Fading Channels in

Mobile Communication
Vinay Panwar
(M-Tech Scholar, Shobhit University)

Sanjeet Kumar
(Lecturer, World Institute of Technology)

Abstract: In a mobile communication environment the

channel is not time invariant and is slowly varying. This
characteristic feature of the channel leads to a
phenomenon called Fading. Fading channels induce rapid
amplitude fluctuations in the received signal. If they are
not compensated for then this will lead to serious
performance degradation. In this paper simulations have
been conducted to study the Bit Error Rate (BER)
performance of a Rayleigh fading channel and it is
compared to the BER performance of the AWGN
channel.

Keywords: Rayleigh fading channel, Bit Error Rate

(BER), AWGN channel.

I. INTRODUCTION
In the study of communication systems the classical
additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, with
statistically independent Gaussian noise samples
corrupting data samples free of intersymbol interference
(ISI), is the usual starting point for understanding basic
performance relationships. The primary source of
performance degradation is thermal noise generated in the
receiver. The external interference received by the
antenna is significant than thermal noise. This external
interference can sometimes be characterized as having a
broadband spectrum and is quantified by a parameter
called antenna temperature [1][2]. The thermal noise
usually has a flat power spectral density over the signal
band and a zero-mean Gaussian voltage probability
density function (PDF). When modelling practical
systems, the next step is the introduction of band limiting
filters.

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If a radio channels propagating characteristics are not

specified, one usually infers that the signal attenuation
versus distance behaves as if propagation takes place over
ideal free space. The model of free space treats the region
between the transmit and receive antennas as being free
of all objects that might absorb or reflect radio frequency
(RF) energy. It also assumes that, within this region, the
atmosphere behaves as a perfectly uniform and non
absorbing medium. In this idealized free-space model, the
attenuation of RF energy between the transmitter and
receiver behaves according to an inverse-square law.
For most practical channels, where signal propagation
takes place in the atmosphere and near the ground, the
free space propagation model is inadequate to describe
the channel and predict system performance. In a wireless
mobile communication system, a signal can travel from
transmitter to receiver over multiple reflective paths; this
phenomenon is referred to as multipath propagation. The
effect can cause fluctuations in the received signals
amplitude, phase, and angle of arrival, giving rise to the
terminology multipath fading. Another name, scintillation
is used to describe the multipath fading caused by
physical changes in the propagating medium, such as
variations in the density of ions in the ionosphere layers
that reflect high-frequency (HF) radio signals. Names,
fading and scintillation refer to a signals random
fluctuations or fading due to multipath propagation. The
main difference is that scintillation involves mechanisms
(e.g., ions) that are much smaller than a wavelength. The
end-to-end modelling and design of systems that mitigate
the effects of fading are usually more challenging than
those whose sole source of performance degradation is
AWGN[4][5].

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International Journal of Modern Engineering Research (IJMER)

www.ijmer.com
Vol.2, Issue.3, May-June 2012 pp-796-798
ISSN: 2249-6645

Fig: 1 Multipath fading channel

II. LARGE-SCALE FADING AND SMALLSCALE FADING

Fig. 1 represents an overview of fading channel. It starts
with two types of fading effects that characterize mobile
communications: large-scale and small-scale fading.
Large-scale fading represents the average signal power
attenuation or path loss due to motion over large areas. In
Fig. 1, the large-scale fading manifestation is shown in
blocks 1, 2, and 3. This phenomenon is affected by
prominent terrain contours (hills, forests, billboards,
clumps of buildings, etc.) between the transmitter and
receiver. The receiver is often represented as being
shadowed by such prominences. The statistics of largescale fading provide a way of computing an estimate of
path loss as a function of distance. This is described in
terms of a mean-path loss and a log-normally distributed
variation about the mean. Small-scale fading refers to the
dramatic changes in signal amplitude and phase that can
be experienced as a result of small changes in the spatial
separation between a receiver and transmitter. As indicated
in Fig. 1, blocks 4, 5, and 6, small-scale fading manifests
itself in two mechanisms, namely, time spreading of the
signal (or signal dispersion) and time-variant behaviour of
the channel. For mobile radio applications, the channel is
time-variant because motion between the transmitter and
receiver results in propagation path changes. The rate of
change of these propagation conditions accounts for the
fading rapidity (rate of change of the fading impairments).
Small-scale fading is also called Rayleigh fading because
if the multiple reflective paths are large in number and
there is no line-of-sight signal component, the envelope of
the received signal is statistically described by a Rayleigh
PDF [3]. When there is a dominant non fading signal
component present, such as a line-of-sight propagation
path, the small scale fading envelope is described by a
Rician PDF [3]. A mobile radio roaming over a large area

must process signals that experience both types of fading:

small-scale fading superimposed on large-scale fading.
III. RAYLEIGH DISTRIBUTION
This is used to describe the statistical time varying nature
of the envelope of an individual multipath component. The
Rayleigh distribution is given by

Where, = rms value of the received signal

r2/2 = instantaneous power
2 = local average power of the received signal before
detection

IV. BIT ERROR RATE (BER)

Bit error rate is a key parameter that is used in assessing
systems that transmit digital data from one location to
another. BER is applicable to radio data links, Ethernet, as
well as fibre optic data systems. When data is transmitted
over a data link, there is a possibility of errors being
introduced into the system. If this is so, the integrity of the
system may be compromised. As a result, it is necessary to
assess the performance of the system, and BER provides
an ideal way in which this can be achieved. BER assesses
the full end to end performance of a system including the
transmitter, receiver and the medium between the two.
BER is defined as the rate at which errors occur in a
transmission system. In simple form,

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International Journal of Modern Engineering Research (IJMER)

www.ijmer.com
Vol.2, Issue.3, May-June 2012 pp-796-798
ISSN: 2249-6645
BER expression is given by Rappaport (2002) as

Figure 2 shows the BER performance when BPSK signal

was transmitted over the fast Rayleigh fading channel at a
mobile speed of 90 km/h. it can be observed that at SNR
of 4 dB. Figure 3 shows the probability density function of
Rayleigh fading channel. Fig 4 shows the envelope of RF
signal.

Where Pb(E/r) = the conditional error probability

P(r) = the pdf of the SNR
V. RESULTS
The simulation of the model under study was carried out
using MATLAB application package. The simulation was
carried out with BPSK modulation. The following
parameters and system configurations were used:
Modulation: BPSK
Carrier frequency: 900 MHz
Bandwidth of signal: 200 ns
Noise: AWGN
Mobile speed: 90 km/h
Fading type: Rayleigh fading

Fig:4 Envelope of RF signal

VI. Conclusion
In this paper, bit error rate performances for Mobile
communication with BPSK transmission schemes have
been evaluated with random data. Two types of fading,
large-scale and small scale were described. Generation of
Rayleigh faded envelope for varying number of paths are
shown. BER Performance of a BPSK signal in presence of
AWGN and Rayleigh Channel.

VII.
REFERENCES
[1] B. Sklar, Digital Communications: Fundamentals and
Fig:2 BER in Rayleigh fading and AWGN

[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]

[6]

[7]

Applications, Ch. 4, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice

Hall, 1988.
H. L. Van Trees,Detection Estimation, and
Modulation Theory, Part I,Ch. 4, New York: Wiley,
1968.
T. S. Rappaport, Wireless Communications, Chs. 3
and 4, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.
J. G. Proakis, DigitalCommunications, Chapter 7,
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983.
E. Biglieri, J. Proakis and S. Shamai, Fading
channels: Information-theoretic and communications
aspects, IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 50-th
anniversary issue, Oct. 1998.
Yee, Z. and E.H. Satorius. 2003. Channel Modelling
and Simulation for Mobile User Objective System
(MUOS)-part1: Flat Scintillation and Fading in
proceedings of IEEE ECC. 5(3503-3510).
Leon, W.C. 2002. Digital and Analog Communication
System, 6th Ed. Pearson Education, INC, Singapore.

Fig: 3 Probability density function of Rayleigh fading

channel
The BER performances as a function of SNR for two i.i.d
paths in mobile multipath fading channel with BPSK.
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